Though the demise of the Soviet Union caught many (if not most) observers and
scholars unawares, it has since served as a convenient organizational principle
for numerous books seeking to explicate aspects of the Soviet experiment and
experience. Kirstin Roth-Ey’s monograph subjects to almost forensic analysis
three pillars of the Soviet media establishment, cinema, radio and television
from the death of Stalin until 1991. She examines the challenges the new
technologies placed on the Soviet leadership and the responses and compromises
which the twin constraints of external ideological competition and internal
ideological convictions exerted on the system. The author’s subtitle indicates
the framework in which she reviews her material, namely the effectiveness of
the system to make its message heard and absorbed and the reasons for its
eventual failure. The author defines her brief as looking ‘beyond the fabled
intelligentsia gatherings around the kitchen table to consider cultural
terrains of a different type: bureaucracies, technologies, social networks, and
everyday life practices’ (12).

Kristin Roth-Ey starts her analysis by outlining the fundamental nature of
Soviet culture as being ‘unapologetically elitist and pedagogical’ (4) with an
audience which was ‘a perpetual work in progress, subordinate and needy’ (4).
This symbiotic relationship, based on a creative tension between the worthwhile
and the popular, forms the basis of the following chapters which chart the
various iterations of this underlying dynamic. The author considers that the
rise of the new media invested the creative intelligentsia with ‘exceptional
clout in ideological terms’ (4) and that the global aspirations of Soviet
culture invested it with ‘an innate disposition to cosmopolitanism…
a sophisticated, confident cultural diversity’ (4), but such a rosy picture is
not borne out by the narrative which follows. Instead we see the repeated
triumph of the party bureaucracy and political expediency.

Chapters One and Two are devoted to the film industry and frame the debate in
terms of cinematic success and Soviet movie culture. The inability of the
Soviet film industry to finance itself without recourse to the importation of
foreign pictures and its ineptitude in exporting Soviet products meant that the
much-vaunted goals of education and mobilization were constantly under threat.
The setting up of the Experimental Creative Studio in the 1960s as part of the
Kosygin reforms which incorporated a version of the profit motif, although
initially successful, was shelved in 1976. Subsequently, the accommodation of
the industry under the leadership of Filipp Ermash (1972–1986) and the
resultant release of domestic blockbusters only exacerbated the situation. The
third chapter explicates the way in which technical and foreign competition
moulded the development of Soviet radio. Once again it is the ideological
‘other’ which looms large in the development of the medium. Various production
decisions associated with the drive to ‘radiofy’ the country meant that Soviet
citizens were able to pick up short-wave foreign broadcasts and in the privacy
of their homes make cultural selections which the earlier more communal way of
life had largely excluded. In its turn Soviet radio embarked on an ambitious
programme of overseas broadcasting but in this case too the experiment with
mirroring the opposition brought its own problems. Chapters Four and Five trace
the evolution of television from its humble beginnings in the 1950s to virtual
total coverage of the country in the 1980s. It proved to be the most successful
of the media, yet it too struggled with the creative tension between ‘political
correctness’ and consumer demands. The epilogue very effectively sums up the
basic argument through a close reading of the film Moscow doesn’t
believe in tears.

In reading this book I was strongly reminded by a Breughel painting in the
variety of the material presented and the attention by the author to detail.
This book contains a most impressive array of secondary sources: monographs,
articles, archival documents, web-sites. The author cites ten archives she
consulted in a list of their abbreviations on p. ix, including the GARF, RGALI
and RGANI in Moscow. This attentiveness is evident not just in the main themes
of the book but also in areas touched on tangentially. A reference to the
attitude to car ownership in her discussion of the influence of foreign radio
is supported by a reference to Lewis Seigelbaum’s book Cars for
Comrades (2008). The Selected Bibliography runs to twelve pages (287–299). The
content is well-argued and jargon-light. The author embellishes her narrative
with quirky, apposite and occasionally humorous illustrative instances, for
instance, the debacle around the programme VVV (Evening of Merry Questions).
Earlier VVV competitions had attracted at most a few dozen contestants, this
challenge brought six to seven hundred to the theatre in the MGU complex where
they were broadcasting. It was a hot day and according to eye-witnesses, cars
and buses packed with overdressed, sweaty people hauling samovars caused giant
traffic jams along local roads. (249)

There is much to recommend in this book but there are several aspects which
detract from the final product. The style (as signalled by the subtitle) does
not adhere to standard academic discourse but verges on the chatty. Some
readers might find this refreshing but I would have preferred a more restrained
literary approach. The couching of such a meticulously researched specialist
academic treatise in colloquialisms seemed to me to undercut the seriousness of
the material. It could be justified as an attempt to bring an esoteric topic to
the attention of the generalist reader, however such turns of phrase as ‘These
are all, let it be said, piddling figures for Soviet television’ (232) and ‘But
what about shortwave production?’ (140) jar in the context of a work which
cites numerous academic documents and sources. I also found the repeated use of
the substantive ‘Soviets’ as a catch-all phrase designating variously ‘Soviet
authorities’ (22, 66, 67, 68,154, 232), ‘Soviet citizens’ (3, 5, 7, 26, 152),
and, possibly in some contexts, ‘Soviet organizations’ and ‘Soviet viewers’.
Although the range of Soviet sources consulted is breath-taking the
transliteration is not always accurate, usually when the letter ‘ia’ is
involved, as in Maia Plisetskaiia which should have been Maiia Plisetskaia. The
Moscow Film Festival was a biennial event not a biannual one (109).

All in all this is an impressive work of research, if less so of presentation.
There is much of novel value for even a seasoned consumer of Soviet culture. It
is hard not to agree with the author’s evaluation that the Soviet media empire
was a ‘very successful failure’. My only over-riding reservation is that,
should it fall into the hands of local undergraduate students, their already
casual approach to the expression of academic niceties might be further
reinforced.